Drawing the Line by Kate CroccoSample

Clearing the Clutter

One practical way to make sure you are aligned with God’s dreams is to take a consistent inventory of relationships, habits, or possessions no longer serving you. If you can immediately get rid of them, do it! Implementing this simple skill of clearing the clutter in your life each day allows blessing, goodness, and peace to have the space to enter in.

Try this instead if you aren’t quite sure if it’s time to part ways with something. Commit to a fast. Fasting can be used for anything keeping you from living fully and intentionally.

For example, after becoming quite obsessed with checking the news, publications, opinion accounts, and social media during the monumental year of a pandemic and extreme social and political unrest, I realized how life-sucking it was. In some ways, checking and educating myself, having the facts, and being able to formulate my take on things gave me peace, but they also led to an obsession of wanting to be up-to-date and on top of it all.

I tried cutting back my news consumption each day, but it wasn’t quite enough. So I completely cut the news out of my life for thirty days. Whenever I was tempted to check the news, I filled my life with God’s Word or connected with a loved one. After a few days, I felt convicted to lay down more and decided to add ten more days.

After forty days news free, during an election, I can honestly say my life felt so much richer, less on edge, and more in control than ever before. It was one of the best things I did that year, and by getting a taste of what life could be like sans distractors, I now automatically guard my mind when it comes to what I put in it (see Colossians 3:2).

Remove all the physical, emotional, and relational clutter that has been weighing you down so that you can begin feeling lighter in your day-to-day, more intentional with the things and people you care most about, and, most importantly, filled up yourself.

In Matthew 6:21, Jesus tells us that our heart will be where our treasure is. What does the “clutter” in your home, mind, or spirit right now say about what you treasure?